Liturgy

Parish Life

If there are parents who have, for various reasons, been unable to enrol their daughter or son in their parish sacramental program, or would like further information, please contact Mary-Anne Lumley by email or via the Office.

THIS SUNDAY'S GOSPEL (Matthew 20:1-16)

This week's Gospel reflection is from Jesuit theologian and writer, Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ. Fr Andrew is media officer with Jesuit Social Services.

The story Jesus tells in today's Gospel has always puzzled people. It sounds like economic idiocy, and to be unjust into the bargain. To pay people a full day's wage for working an hour would soon send you broke. To pay people who have worked all day for you only as much as you pay last minute blow-ins will make them seriously annoyed. They will not thank you, no matter how you explain yourself. Justice is justice.

And that, of course, is the point of the story. Jesus tells his hearers there is more to life than buying and selling, working and getting paid, than entitlement. He was speaking to people who thought themselves special, better than others because they were God's chosen people. They were entitled to the best. Jesus tells them that God continues to choose and love and to call them. But God also loves other people too, and is perfectly free to invite them into the family. It is not about economic fairness but about love. God acts towards us in the same way a very generous couple might do in adopting a child and treating her in the same way as their own children. Love does such things.

At Jesuit Social Services we can see how our society loses when love is forgotten and everything is seen from the point of view of economic efficiency and strict justice. It is cruel to treat human beings, and particularly disadvantaged people, as losers simply because they cannot contribute as substantially as others to economic growth, and so to deprive them of the benefits they need to live with some dignity. It also injures society by making it more harsh. And ultimately it will cost society more financially in providing prisons, hospitals, counselling for the people damaged by bad policy.

The way our society works is often to exclude people by cutting off benefits, detaining or jailing them, and speaking badly of them. When you do this you damage people and society itself. Jesus advocates the way of inclusion. In his story, everyone benefits; no one is excluded; no one is compared unfavourably with others. This is the way of love. It includes people.

Jesus is not proposing a new, revolutionary wages system. His story gets us thinking precisely because it an exception to the vineyard owner's usual rule. But in things that matter most deeply, God does not treat us according to what we deserve. God's way is one of love, not of measuring justice and compassion like a blind mathematician. God invites us to follow the same way.

Fr Andrew will be at UWA next Friday and will lead a 'Conversation on Refugees and Asylum Seekers'. Further details:

COMMUNITY MASS

Our College community celebrates Eucharist together each Friday morning in term time. Next community Mass - Friday 17th October.